The AMERICAN SPRING

The AMERICAN SPRING

Here’s an extended analogy which may or may not hold.

Remember Tahrir Square in Cairo in spring of 2011? Millions of long-suffering, disaffected and poverty-stricken Egyptians arose as one to coerce the powers-that-be into liberalizing the nation’s political system.

For a few short days it appeared the man-in-the-street had won his battle.

Until the Egyptian Army, long the ruling power in that ancient regime, realized that to change the system might well mean a demolition of its own powers.

The crackdown was swift and complete. And the Egyptian man-in-the-street is still powerless, poverty-ridden, without hope. Very little real change has occurred.

For the sake of our argument, imagine if you will that in this country, the USA, the man-in-the-street has been energized by possibilities for change in our own political system by one Donald J. Trump. For a few short hours (!) in our case, it appeared that the man-in-the-street had won.

Then the American powers that be – within Congress, within both parties, within industry and communications and infrastructure and farming, etc., not to mention the lobbying sub-strata – realized that to change the US system might very well mean a diminution of their own powers, i.e., the status quo against which so many voters had rallied.

As one, it seems, the old guard – those who had brought the country to its legislative knees – underwritten wealthy industries with subsidies, bailed out banks too big to fail, made Congress totally unresponsive to its citizen electors, brought the wheels of Congressional progress to a complete halt and embraced tightly the power and value of nothing but money – overnight reacted with horror at the prospect of any change in their well-padded existence.

With Mr. Trump as president, wouldn’t their own interests and powers be lessened? Might not even their very seats of political influence be stripped from them? Might they not be forced off their governmental cushions and made to live and work in a society they had grown to disdain? In short, might they not just lose their jobs, their insider information, the possibility of making money for themselves outside the daily workings of Congress itself? Might they not lose book deals, television contracts, free “investigative” trips abroad for themselves and their families and friends? Might they lose their overly generous pensions, their trouble free health care?

Might they not lose, to put it bluntly, exactly why they had entered “public service” to begin with?

In defense, the leaders of the Republican party all became General Sisis. If they could have, they would have thrown Donald J. Trump into an asylum somewhere and thrown away the keys.

They are all used to the status quo. It works for them all. It is under threat. By Bernie Sanders as well.

And so, if they all had their ways, the USA would sink back into the languor of inaction and gridlock.

Now, some members of Congress and a few former Federal officials, have decided to back Mr. Trump as ”presumptive party nominee.” Chances are they have made this choice with an ear to their various publics who are clamoring for Trump to run and to win. And to start making the changes he is promising.

(That millions of voters, should Trump be nominated and eventually elected, are going to be dreadfully disappointed to find out that Donald’s promises are no better or stronger than those made by any other politician, is certain.)

Apart from a few notable endorsements, most of the Republican party’s super-structure has in the past week been busy laying land-mines in front of Mr. Trump. Today it seems that there is nowhere Trump can go safely.

Whether or not one is a Trumpista (-o?), the Party has sabotaged Trump‘s campaign as well as most chances he might have had at victory at the November polls.

In doing so, the Republicans have proven Trump’s (and Sanders’) principal points, that the status quo is rotten and needs to be changed.

Otherwise the American Spring is notable for only one thing: being a popular movement that was murdered by those powers in its path.